A primary objective of orthodontics is to realign patients' teeth to positions where the teeth function optimally and have an aesthetic appearance. The goal of a doctor is to take the patient from their current condition (“initial” or “starting dentition”) to a final condition (“treatment goal”). The result achieved is known as the “treatment outcome.” There may be many ways to achieve the goal and these are known as “treatment options.” The methodologies used by the doctor to get the patient to the goal are known as “treatment plan.”
Often times, doctors establish the goal as “ideal” and discontinue treatment when they are as close as they can possibly get to the ideal. However, more recently with the growing use of 3-D computer graphics software services and programs in dentistry, the doctor can actually establish a custom treatment goal specific to each individual patient, and this goal may be a limited treatment goal and not ideal in every component of the bite. This is important because if the doctor is able to achieve 100% of the intended limited goal, the treatment may still be deemed a success, whereas it may be possible that if the doctor only achieves 75% of a completely “ideal” treatment goal, the treatment might not be deemed a success even though the amount of measured improvement on an absolute scale in the latter situation might be higher than in the limited treatment situation.
Typically, appliances such as fixed braces and wires are applied to a patient's teeth to gradually reposition them from an initial arrangement to a final arrangement. The diagnosis and treatment planning process of orthodontic cases can be imprecise as the final dentition of a patient is based on the knowledge and expertise of the treating doctor in assembling various parameters in an assessment of each patient's condition and in a determination of a final position for each tooth. Different clinicians will vary in their definitions of individual orthodontic parameters and their definition of how a case should ideally be treated will also often vary.
To overcome some of these subjective issues, various indices have been used to more objectively define a patient's initial dentition and final outcome. For example, the PAR (Peer Assessment Rating) index identifies how far a dentition is from a good occlusion. A score is assigned to various occlusal traits which make up a malocclusion. The individual scores are summed to obtain an overall total, representing the degree a case deviates from ideal functional alignment and occlusion. The PAR grader is then calibrated to a known standard set of orthodontic conditions so this individual is able to rate new cases similarly.
In PAR, a score of zero would indicate ideal alignment and positioning of all orthodontic dental components as defined by generally accepted occlusal and aesthetic relationships the orthodontic community has adopted, and higher scores would indicate increased levels of irregularity. The overall score can be recorded on both pre- and post-treatment dental casts. The difference between these scores represents the degree of improvement as a result of orthodontic intervention. In addition to the PAR index, other indices may be used such as Index of Complexity Outcome and Need (ICON), Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN) and American Board of Orthodontics (ABO) indices. These indices also rely on individual dental measurements in order to derive an assessment of deviation from an ideal.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to have methods and systems to provide dynamic orthodontic related assessment, diagnosis and/or treatment profiles.